Our colleague and NIHR Leeds BRC member Professor Francesco Del Galdo recently achieved the prestigious accomplishment of giving the State of the Art Lecture at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR)’s annual Convergence meeting.
During the State of the Art Lecture: Precision Medicine in Systemic Sclerosis , experts explored cutting-edge approaches in systemic sclerosis (SSc) care.
Prof Del Galdo, took centre stage, showcasing data-driven strategies to address the complex clinical manifestations of SSc. His insights are paving the way for more precise, patient-focused management.
Joining him was Dr Elizabeth Volkmann of UCLA, who shared ground-breaking work on functional response biomarkers for SSc-ILD.
Prof Del Galdo looked at patients with Raynaud’s phenomenon from the Very Early Diagnosis of Systemic Sclerosis (VEDOSS) database to better understand when SSc develops. He found that patients without antinuclear antibodies had a very low risk of developing SSc. However, patients with multiple red flags had a higher risk of developing SSc over time. This shows that the autoantibody profile in skin involvement is strongly predictive of skin severity and associated with distinct molecular phenotypes.
Read more about the lecture at the ACR website.